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In 1987, the centenary of Marcus Garvey’s birth when I first introduced legislation to exonerate the great civil rights leader, the New York Times cited a study of J. Edgar Hoover’s, role in Garvey’s prosecution:
“Hoover saw the blacks and the Reds as a larger conspiracy. The new Negro movement, which Garvey symbolized, Hoover saw as a terrible threat to the American way.”
Even then, in 1987, Hoover remained a near sacrosanct figure in Washington, not yet fully exposed as a bully who wielded the power of the nation’s preeminent law enforcement organization. Today, the late former director of the FBI is widely discredited as a power-hungry blackmailer of U.S. presidents and a hateful bigot and slanderer of Martin Luther King who shied away from prosecuting organized crime while doing everything in his power to intimidate and undermine leaders of civil rights anti-war movements of the 1960’s.
As Hoover’s reputation declines—a pending bill in the U.S. House of Representatives would strike his name from FBI headquarters in Washington--Garvey’s is rising. Last year’s PBS documentary on Garvey placed his name among the giants of American 20th century Black history.
Marcus Garvey was one of America’s great Black leaders and in the early 1920’s he was wrongfully prosecuted and imprisoned on charges of mail fraud. It is time high time that the Congress of the United States of America recognize this injustice and clear his name.
Born in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, August 17, 1887, Garvey epitomized the strength and pride of the people of the Caribbean. Garvey was virtually self-taught, reading voraciously from his father's extensive library. By 1910, and then residing in Kingston, he quickly established himself as a spellbinding orator and political organizer.
Garvey’s philosophy and accomplishments challenged the myths of inferiority that demeaned people of African heritage in the 1920’s. When lynching of Black men was commonplace, when house burning by Southern Klansmen and Northern rioters were routine, when theories of white supremacy were acceptable and notions of equality subversive, Marcus Garvey preached racial pride and economic independence.
He raised more than one million dollars from thousands of investors in the United States, the Caribbean, Africa and Europe to establish the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and his well-known Black Star Line steamship company. The Black Star Line was established to purchase ships to initiate trade with and eventually carry New World Blacks to Africa.. Indeed, one of Garvey’s most important legacies was his internationalism, his recognition that the struggles of the Black people of America were linked by blood and history to the quests for independence by people of color around the world.
Garvey’s success inevitably drew the suspicion of an ambitious J. Edgar Hoover, who ordered the surveillance and infiltration of Garvey’s UNIA. When evidence of subversion failed to turn up, Garvey was indicted on a business offense. Garvey’s trial was a mockery of justice. The charges were confused, the evidence flimsy, and the judge biased. To make matters worse, Garvey insisted on defending himself.
In 1923, Garvey was convicted of mail fraud and sentenced to five years in prison. His appeals to higher courts were promptly denied. Numerous petitions for Presidential pardons—signed by thousands of the very people whom he was accused of defrauding—were rebuffed.
Garvey’s prosecution was one of this nation’s great miscarriages of justice. This fact has been well documented by Prof. Robert Hill, editor of the Garvey papers at UCLA, historian John Henrik Clark and others.
Yet, the government has held firm in its conviction that Garvey was a “menace,” as he was described by the young J. Edgar Hoover, who made Garvey one of his first targets, as FBI director. Among his last was Martin Luther King, a philosophical successor to Garvey, who was branded a “communist,” wiretapped and hounded by the aging Hoover.
It may be difficult to comprehend today, but in the racial climate of the 1920’s, Garvey success was his greatest liability. At a time when Black people were stigmatized as intellectually inferior—and were economically more disadvantaged than today—accomplishments of the magnitude achieved by Garvey were immediately and almost universally dismissed as fraudulent. But as Garvey’s mystique has grown, so too has our understanding of the wealth of his contributions and his historical importance as the trailblazer for the great civil rights leaders who followed.
In the United States, where he lived for 10 of his 53 years, Garvey inspired hundreds of thousands of Black American supporters with hope for a better future. Today, he stands out in the pantheon of Black America’s greatest and most controversial leaders. But in the records of the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Courts, Garvey remains ex-convict number 19359.
Almost 75 years ago, Marcus Garvey was released from Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, his sentence commuted by President Calvin Coolidge. Deported to his native Jamaica, Garvey died 13 years later, and entered history as that nation’s preeminent hero. As a role model to millions of common people in the Americas and the Third World, he would inspire the independence movements that liberated colonial Africa.
Despite the harassment and the weakness of the evidence against him, Garvey’s prosecution may have been inevitable in the 1920’s. But by unbiased standards, the charges were not substantiated and his conviction was not justified. We cannot overturn the verdict but we can prove that times have changed and that we now know better.
In the 107th Congress, I have again introduced my resolution declaring that Marcus Garvey (1) was innocent of the charges brought against him by the U.S. Government; and (2) should be recognized internationally as a leader and thinker in the struggle for human rights. It also calls upon the President to take appropriate measures to clear Marcus Garvey's name.
It is my wish that my colleagues in the U.S. Congress stand by me in my efforts to right this wrong and give Marcus Garvey the accolades that he truly deserves from the United States.
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